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Elinor Ostrom

Elinor Ostrom

Professor


Education
B.A. at University of California, Los Angeles, 1954
M.A. at University of California, Los Angeles, 1962
Ph.D. at University of California, Los Angeles, 1965

Professional Experience

  • Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington Senior Research Director, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington
  • Founding Director, Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, Arizona State University, Tempe
  • Professor (part-time), School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, BloomingtonCo-Director, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, 1973-2009
  • Co-Director, Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change (CIPEC), Indiana University, 1996-2006
  • Chair, Department of Political Science, Indiana University, 1980-84; Acting Chair, 1989-90
  • Professor, Department of Political Science, Indiana University, 1974-91
  • Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Indiana University, 1969-74
  • Assistant Professor and Graduate Advisor, Department of Government, Indiana University, 1966-69
  • Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Government, Indiana University, 1965-66
  • Personnel Analyst III, University of California, Los Angeles, 1957-61
  • Employment Interviewer and Assistant Employee Relations Manager, Godfrey L. Cabot, Inc., Boston, MA, 1955-57

Awards, Honors & Certifications

  • Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, 2009
  • Elazar Distinguished Federalism Scholar Award, APSA, Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations Section, 2009
  • Reimar Lüst Award for International Scholarly and Cultural Exchange, Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, 2009
  • Jonathan M. Tisch Prize for Civic Engagement Research, Tufts University, Medford, MA, March 5, 2009
  • Honorary Doctorate, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, 2008
  • Galbraith Award, American Agricultural Economics Association, 2008
  • Honorary Doctorate, McGill University, Montreal, 2008
  • William H. Riker Prize in Political Science, University of Rochester, 2008
  • Fellow, American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia, 2008 Beijer Fellow, The Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Stockholm, Sweden, 2007 Honorary Doctorate, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, 2007
  • Honorary Doctorate in Commemoration of Carl Linnaeus, Uppsala University, Sweden, 2007
  • Cozzarelli Prize, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2006
  • APSA, Political Economy Section, William Riker Award for Best Book on Political Economy, APSA, Political Economy Section, 2006
  • Doctor of Humane Letters, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2006
  • Member, American Philosophical Society, Elected 2006
  • James Madison Award, American Political Science Association, 2005
  • Sustainability Science Award, Ecological Society of America, 2005
  • Honorary Doctorate, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, 2005
  • John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Sciences, 2004
  • Lifetime Achievement Award, Atlas Economic Research Foundation, 2003
  • Honorary Doctorate, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, 2002
  • Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Elected September 2001
  • Member, National Academy of Sciences, Elected May 2001
  • Aaron Wildavsky Enduring Contribution Award for Governing the Commons, APSA, Public Policy Section, 2000
  • Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science, Uppsala University, 1999
  • Honorary Doctorate in Economics, University of Zurich, 1999
  • Thomas R. Dye Service Award for outstanding service to the Policy Studies Organization, 1997
  • Frank E. Seidman Distinguished Award in Political Economy, 1997
  • Miriam Mills Award for being an outstanding woman in the field of policy studies, Policy Studies Organization, 1996
  • Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for excellence in the field of international environmental affairs for
  • Governing the Commons, International Studies Association, 1992 Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1991
  • Donald Campbell Award for an outstanding methodological innovator in public policy studies, Policy Studies Organization, 1986

Professional Interest

Exploring how institutional rules affect the structure of action situations within which individuals face incentives, make choices, and jointly affect each other. Problems involving collective goods and common-pool resource systems, and how various types of institutions enhance or detract from the capabilities of individuals to achieve equitable, workable, efficient solutions are a central theoretical concern.

Selected Publications
Full Vita (pdf)

Books:

Selected Journal Articles and Chapters in Books:
  • "Governance and Institutions." In The Princeton Guide to Ecology, ed. Simon A. Levin, 748-53. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.
  • "A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems." Science 325(5939) (July 24, 2009): 419-22.
  • "Building Trust to Solve Commons Dilemmas: Taking Small Steps to Test an Evolving Theory of Collective Action." In Games, Groups, and the Global Good, ed. Simon Levin, 207-28. New York: Springer, 2009.
  • "Analyzing the Dynamic Complexity of Development Interventions: Lessons from an Irrigation Experiment in Nepal" (with Wai Fung Lam). Policy Sciences, OnlineFirst May 5, 2009, http://www.springerlink.com/content/l174382165v62868/
  • "Unresolved Questions of the Social Sciences." Tvärsnitt 2/09 (2009): 6-8. (in Swedish).
  • "Polycentric Systems as One Approach to Solving Collective-Action Problems." In Climate Change and Sustainable Development: New Challenges for Poverty Reduction, ed. Mohamed Salih, 17-35. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2009.
  • "Design Principles of Robust Property Rights Institutions: What Have We Learned?" In Property Rights and Land Policies, ed. Gregory K. Ingram and Yu-Hung Hong, 25-51. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2009.
  • "The Meaning of Social Capital and Its Link to Collective Action" (with T. K. Ahn). In Handbook of Social Capital: The Troika of Sociology, Political Science and Economics, ed. Gert T. Svendsen and Gunnar L. Svendsen, 17-35. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2009.
  • "Trust in Private and Common Property Experiments" (with James Cox, James Walker, Antonio Jamie Castillo, Eric Coleman, Robert Holahan, Michael Schoon, and Brian Steed). Southern Economic Journal 75(4) (April 2009): 957-75.
  • "Gemeingütermanagement-eine Perspektive für bürgerschaftliches Engagement" [Governing a Commons from a Citizen's Perspective]. In Wem gehört die Welt? Zur Wiederentdeckung der Gemeingüter, ed. Silke Helfrich, 218-228. München: Oekom Verlag, 2009.
  • "Commons." In The Oxford Companion to Global Change, ed. David Cuff and Andrew Goudie. Oxford University Press, 2009. Oxford Reference Online.
  • "What is Social Capital?" In Social Capital: Reaching Out, Reaching In, ed. Viva Bartkus and James Davis, 17-38. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2009.
  • "Engaging with Impossibilities and Possibilities." In Arguments for a Better World: Essays in Honor of Amartya Sen, Volume II: Society, Institutions, and Development, ed. Kaushik Basu and Ravi Kanbur, 522-41. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
  • "Top-Down Solutions: Looking Up from East Africa's Rangelands" (with Esther Mwangi). Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 51(1) (January/February 2009): 34-44.
  • "A Century of Institutions and Ecology in East Africa's Rangelands: Linking Institutional Robustness with Ecological Resilience of Kenya's Maasailand" (with Esther Mwangi). In Institutions and Sustainability: Political Economy of Agriculture and the Environment-Essays in Honour of Konrad Hagedorn, ed. Volker Beckmann and Martina Padmanabhan, 195-221. New York: Springer, 2009.
  • "TURFS in the Lab: Institutional Innovation in Real-Time Dynamic Spatial Commons" (with Marco Janssen). Rationality and Society 20(4) (2008): 371-97.
  • "El Gobierno de los Bienes Comunes Desde el Punto de Vista de la Ciudadanía." In Genes, Bytes y Emisiones: Bienes Comunes y Ciudadanía, ed. Silke Helfrich, 268-278. Mexico: Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2008.
  • "Institutional Dynamics, Spatial Organization, and Landscape Change" (with Tom Evans and Abigail York). In Political Economies of Landscape Change: Places of Power, ed. James Wescoat and Douglas Johnston, 111-29. New York: Springer, 2008.
  • "Institutions and the Environment." Economic Affairs 28(3) (September 2008): 24-31.
  • "Linking Forests, Trees, and People: From the Air, on the Ground, and in the Lab" (with Harini Nagendra). Current Conservation, no. 2.1 (January 2008): 4-5.
  • "Developing a Method for Analyzing Institutional Change." In Alternative Institutional Structures: Evolution and Impact, ed. Sandra Batie and Nicholas Mercuro, 48-76. New York: Routledge, 2008.
  • "Diversity and Resilience of Social-Ecological Systems" (with Jon Norberg, James Wilson, and Brian Walker). In Complexity Theory for a Sustainable Future, ed. Jon Norberg and Graeme Cumming. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
  • "Tragedy of the Ecological Commons." In Encyclopedia of Ecology, 1st edition, ed. Sven Erik Jorgensen and Brian D. Fath, 3573-76. Oxford: Elsevier, 2008.
  • "Effect of Rule Choice in Dynamic Interactive Spatial Commons" (with Marco Janssen, Robert Goldstone, and Filippo Menczer). International Journal of the Commons 2(2) (July 2008): 288-312.
  • "The Challenge of Common-Pool Resources." Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 50(4) (July/August 2008): 8-20.
  • "Facilitating Decentralized Policies for Sustainable Governance and Management of Forest Resources in Asia" (with Ganesh Shivakoti). In Decentralization, Forests and Rural Communities: Policy Outcomes in South and Southeast Asia, ed. Edward Webb and Ganesh Shivakoti, 292-310. New Delhi: Sage, 2008.
  • "Implications of Leasehold and Community Forestry for Poverty Alleviation" (with Mukunda Karmacharya and Birendra Karna). In Decentralization, Forests and Rural Communities: Policy Outcomes in South and Southeast Asia, ed. Edward Webb and Ganesh Shivakoti, 177-208. New Delhi: Sage, 2008.
  • "Decentralization and Community-Based Forestry: Learning from Experience" (with Arun Agrawal). In Decentralization, Forests and Rural Communities: Policy Outcomes in South and Southeast Asia, ed. Edward Webb and Ganesh Shivakoti, 44-67. New Delhi: Sage, 2008.
  • "Deliberation, Learning, and Institutional Change: The Evolution of Institutions in Judicial Settings" (with William Blomquist). Constitutional Political Economy [electronic online first version, June 13, 2008].
  • "Frameworks and Theories of Environmental Change." Global Environmental Change 18(2) (May 2008): 249-252.
  • "Social Capital and Collective Action" (with T. K. Ahn). In The Handbook of Social Capital, ed. Dario Castiglione, Jan van Deth, and Guglielmo Wolleb, 70-100. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
  • "Tragedy of the Commons." In The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd ed., ed. Steven Durlauf and Lawrence Blume. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
  • "Will Lessons from Small-Scale Social Dilemmas Scale Up?" (with Michael McGinnis). In New Issues and Paradigms in Research on Social Dilemmas, ed. Anders Biel, Daniel Eek, Tommy Gärling, and Mathias Gustaffson, 189-211. Berlin: Springer, 2008.
  • "The Vital Role of Norms and Rules in Maintaining Open Public and Private Economies" (with David Schwab). In Moral Markets: The Critical Role of Values in the Economy, ed. Paul J. Zak, 204-227. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.
  • "Analyzing Decentralized Resource Regimes from a Polycentric Perspective" (with Krister Andersson). Policy Sciences 41:71-93.
  • "Fifteen Years of Empirical Research on Collective Action in Natural Resource Management: Struggling to Build Large-N Databases Based on Qualitative Research" (with Amy Poteete). World Development 36(1) (2008): 176-95.
  • "Collective Action and Local Development Processes." Sociologica (Italian Journal of Sociology) 3 (2007): 1-32.
  • "Coupled Human and Natural Systems" (with Jianguo Liu, Thomas Dietz, Stephen Carpenter, Carl Folke, Marina Alberti, Charles Redman, Stephen Schneider, et al.). Ambio 36(8) (December 2007): 639-49.
  • "Challenges and Growth: The Development of the Interdisciplinary Field of Institutional Analysis." Journal of Institutional Economics 3(3) (December 2007): 239-64.
  • "Governing the Commons in the New Millennium: A Diversity of Institutions for Natural Resource Management" (with Harini Nagendra). In Encyclopedia of Earth, ed. Cutler J. Cleveland. Washington, DC: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment, 2007. [First published in the Encyclopedia of Earth, November 16, 2007].
  • "Institutions, Collective Action and Effective Forest Management: Learning from Studies in Nepal" (with Harini Nagendra). In The Sage Handbook of Environment and Society, ed. Jules Pretty, et al., 578-89. London: Sage, 2007.
  • "Traditions and Trends in the Study of the Commons" (with Frank van Laerhoven). International Journal of the Commons 1(1) (October 2007): 3-28.
    "Collective Action Theory." In The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics, ed. Carles Boix and Susan C. Stokes, 186-208. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
    "A Diagnostic Approach for Going Beyond Panaceas," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(39) (2007): 15181-87. [Indiana University News Release regarding special PNAS issue.]
  • "Going Beyond Panaceas" (with Marco Janssen and John Anderies). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(39) (2007): 15176-78.
  • "Complexity of Coupled Human and Natural Systems" (with Jianguo Liu, Thomas Dietz, Stephen Carpenter, Marina Alberti, Carl Folke, et al.). Science 317(5844) (2007): 1513-16.
  • "Tenure Alone is Not Sufficient: Monitoring is Essential" (with Harini Nagendra). Environmental Economics and Policy Studies 8(3) (2007): 175-99.
  • "Multiple Institutions for Multiple Outcomes." In Sustainable Resource Use: Institutional Dynamics and Economics, ed. Alex Smajgl and Silva Larson, 23-50. Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2007.
  • "Fourteen Years of Monitoring Community-Managed Forests: Learning from IFRI's Experience" (with Eva Wollenberg, Leticia Merino, and Arun Agrawal). International Forestry Review 9(2) (2007): 670-84.
  • "Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems to Spatial and Temporal Variability" (with Marco Janssen and John Anderies). Society and Natural Resources 20(4) (April 2007): 307-22.
  • "Institutional Rational Choice: An Assessment of the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework." In Theories of the Policy Process, 2nd ed., ed. Paul A. Sabatier, 21-64. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2007.
  • "A Frequently Overlooked Precondition of Democracy: Citizens Knowledgeable About and Engaged in Collective Action." In Preconditions of Democracy, The Tampere Club Series, vol. 2, ed. Geoffrey Brennan, 75-89. Tampere, Finland: Tampere University Press, 2006.
  • "Biography of Robert Axelrod." PS: Political Science & Politics 40(1) (January 2006): 171-74.
  • "Empirically Based, Agent-Based Models" (with Marco Janssen). Ecology and Society 11(2) (2006): 37. [online]
  • "A Framework for Analysing the Microbiological Commons" (with Charlotte Hess). International Social Science Journal 188 (June 2006): 335-49.
  • "Adoption of a New Regulation for the Governance of Common-Pool Resources by a Heterogeneous Population" (with Marco Janssen). In Inequality, Cooperation, and Environmental Sustainability, ed. Jean-Marie Baland, Pranab Bardhan, and Samuel Bowles, 60-96. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.
  • "12 Questions To . . . Elinor Ostrom." GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society 15(4) (December 2006): 246-47.
  • "Insights on Linking Forests, Trees, and People from the Air, on the Ground, and in the Laboratory" (with Harini Nagendra). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103(51) (2006): 19224-31. Winner of the 2006 PNAS Cozzarelli Prize for paper of outstanding scientific excellence and originality. See also "Profile of Elinor Ostrom," by Nick Zagorski, PNAS 103(51) (2006): 19221-23.
  • "The Value-Added of Laboratory Experiments for the Study of Institutions and Common-Pool Resources." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 61(2) (October 2006): 149-63.
  • "How Norms Help Reduce the Tragedy of the Commons: A Multi-Layer Framework for Analyzing Field Experiments" (with Juan-Camilo Cardenas). In Norms and the Law, ed. John N. Drobak, 105-36. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  • "The Globalization of Socio-Ecological Systems: An Agenda for Scientific Research" (with Oran Young, Frans Berkhout, Gilberto Gallopin, Marco Janssen, and Sander van der Leeuw). Global Environmental Change 16(3) (August 2006): 304-16.
  • "Multiple Institutions for Multiple Outcomes." In Adapting Rules for Sustainable Resource Use, ed. Alex Smajgl and Silva Larson, 29-57. Townsville, Australia: CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, 2006.
  • "Governing Social-Ecological Systems" (with Marco Janssen). In Handbook of Computational Economics: Agent-Based Computational Economics, vol. 2, ed. Leigh Tesfatsion and Kenneth L. Judd, 1465-509. Amsterdam: Elsevier Publishers, 2006.
  • "Political Science and Conservation Biology: A Dialog of the Deaf" (with Arun Agrawal). Conservation Biology 20(3) (June 2006): 681-82.
  • "The Struggle to Govern the Commons" (with Thomas Dietz and Paul Stern). In Science Magazine's State of the Planet 2006-2007, ed. Donald Kennedy, and the editors of Science, 126-41. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006.
  • "Resilience, Vulnerability and Adaptation" (with Marco Janssen). IHDP Update (Newsletter of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change) 1/2006, pp. 10-11.
  • "The Complexity of Rules and How They May Evolve Over Time." In Evolution and Design of Institutions, ed. Christian Schubert and Georg von Wangenheim, 100-22. New York: Routledge, 2006.
  • "Converting Threats into Opportunities." PS: Political Science & Politics 39(1) (January 2006): 3-12. APSA 2005 James Madison Award Lecture.
  • "Not Just One Best System: The Diversity of Institutions for Coping with the Commons." In Researching the Culture in Agri-Culture: Social Research for International Agricultural Development, ed. Michael Cernea and Amir Kassam, 329-60. Cambridge, MA: CABI Publishing, 2006.
  • "What We Have Learned from Multiple Challenges to the Study of Political Science." Perspectives on Politics 3(2) (June 2005): 321-22.
  • "The Aid Effectiveness Puzzle" (with Sujai Shivakumar, Krister Andersson, and Clark Gibson). In The Constitution of Development: Crafting Capabilities for Self-Governance, ed. Sujai Shivakumar, 21-38. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
  • "Incentives Affecting Land Use Decisions of Nonindustrial Private Forest Landowners" (with Abigail York and Marco Janssen). In Handbook of Global Environmental Politics, ed. Peter Dauvergne, 233-248. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2005.
  • "Policies That Crowd Out Reciprocity and Collective Action." In Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life, ed. Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, and Ernst Fehr, 253-75. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.
  • "A Grammar of Institutions" (with Sue E.S. Crawford). In Understanding Institutional Diversity, ed. Elinor Ostrom, 137-74. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Originally published in: American Political Science Review 89(3) (September 1995): 582-600.
  • "Doing Institutional Analysis: Digging Deeper Than Markets and Hierarchies." In Handbook of New Institutional Economics, ed. Claude Menard and Mary M. Shirley, 819-48. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer, 2005.
  • "Conserving the World's Forests: Are Protected Areas the Only Way?" (with Tanya Hayes). Indiana Law Review 38 (2005): 595-617.
  • "Unlocking Public Entrepreneurship and Public Economies." Discussion Paper No. 2005/01. Helsinki, Finland: World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU/WIDER), 2005.